Some of the best recipes are not online at all. They live on index cards, in the margins of a cookbook, or on a printout stuck to the fridge. Tradish reads both handwriting and printed text, so you can bring those in with your camera.

Two ways to scan

From the Add button you have two choices:

• Scan a recipe card uses your camera to photograph the recipe right now.
• Upload a photo pulls an existing image from your photo library.

Either way, Tradish reads the text off the image and builds the recipe for you.

Use up to five photos

A recipe rarely fits on one side of one card. You can include up to five photos in a single recipe, so you can capture:

• The front and back of a card
• A recipe that spans two cookbook pages
• A long printout in a couple of shots

Tradish reads all of them together and stitches the recipe into one.

The review step

Before Tradish reads anything, you get a review step where you can:

• Retake a photo that came out blurry
• Reorder photos so the steps end up in the right sequence
• Add another photo if you missed part of the recipe

Take a moment here. Getting clean, well ordered photos in now saves editing later.

Get the lighting right

Good light is the single biggest thing you can do for a clean scan. Aim for:

• Bright, even lighting with no harsh shadows across the text
• The card or page flat and filling most of the frame
• The camera held steady so nothing blurs

Handwriting reads best when it is dark and clear against a light background.

If a scan does not read

Two messages you might run into, and what each one means:

• Wrong file type. "We can't read that image format. Use a JPG, PNG, GIF, or WebP and try again." This shows up with an unusual image format. Re export or re shoot the photo and it will read.
• Too blurry. "Those photos came out too blurry to read. Retake them in good light and try again." Steady the camera, add light, and try once more.

After it reads

Scanning ends in the same review screen as every other method, with the title, ingredients, and steps pre-filled from what Tradish read. Handwriting and faint printing are where small mistakes creep in, so give it a careful read. You can fix anything right there. See Editing a recipe for the full form.

If you would rather type the recipe out yourself, Writing a recipe by hand walks through the blank form.